


After, Frank

by muskoxen



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Frank Castle loves his children, Frank Castle was a great dad, Introspection, Pete Castiglione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muskoxen/pseuds/muskoxen
Summary: Being Pete is easy. Being Before-Frank was hard work, and the payoff was worth every drop of sweat.Being this new guy, After-Frank.It’s almost impossible.Because he’s still Before-Frank, who sang lullabies to his kids, and he’s also still that raw pit of vengeance who woke up in the hospital bed. The one the newspapers called The Punisher.But he’s also the guy standing in Karen Page’s kitchen, who has half-healed scars on his face and his brain, and a thirst to hurt.





	After, Frank

**Author's Note:**

> This sat, unfinished and untouched, for entirely too long.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.
> 
> P.s. I've started using a AO3 skin that sort of mimics Dark Mode color schemes and makes the buttons and text flatter and larger. I'm quite pleased with it. You can find the code and preview images on my tumblr, linked in my profile.

As it turns out, being Pete Castiglione is a lot easier than Frank anticipated.

Pete has a driver’s license, a passport, and a social security number. Pete was a Marine, too, so he even has unused GI Bill and limited VA benefits. And Lieberman gave Frank fifty grand, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Group is…okay. Mostly, Frank listens. But, he’s going twice a week and he and Curtis shoot the shit afterward over Curt’s terrible coffee and Frank gives him hell about his dating stories.

He’s dreaming less and less, which is doing wonders for his body. Because he’s sleeping through the night every two, three days. And when he wakes up, the come down isn’t so bad anymore. The time between rising consciousness and remembering that Maria and the kids are gone is only a moment.

It feels less like he’s losing her every morning. It feels more like, maybe, he lost her last month.

The kids, shit. It’s like the kids are alive and not-alive. Because losing Frank Junior and Lisa, it’s not like losing Maria. Maria was his partner, his idol, his best friend. But the kids aren’t just little people, they’re part-him and they’re part-Maria and they’re mostly memories and dreams and plans that will never come true. He wakes up worrying about them, or remembering them raising hell. Like, he can remember teaching Lisa to ride a bike, but he can also remember thinking about teaching her to drive. And now that plan – he knew he’d buy a shitty old manual for her just to teach her how to drive stick – it’s gone.

Everything’s gone.

Everything’s gone for Frank, anyway.

Pete’s just getting started.

It’s a dangerous road to walk, being Pete Castiglione. Because Frank knows that the CIA and DHS know who he is and what he’s doing. He’s done this shit before, being the Punisher. He sees their little watchdogs, he knows they’re monitoring his Internet traffic and credit reports. He’s perfectly aware that they’re aware of every move he makes, every dentist appointment, every book he checks out at the library.

So Pete doesn’t spend a dime of Lieberman’s cash.

Being Pete is expensive, though. Because Pete lives in New York, and New York is fucking expensive, and also because Pete needs new teeth and a nose that works and also food.

So Pete gets a job. He works for UPS in the shipping center, throwing boxes around on the graveyard shift. He gets hired on for holiday hours – Christmas is their busiest season – but January comes around and instead of getting laid off like all the other assholes he was hired with, they keep him on. They like his work ethic, they say. They promote him, give him part-time status and enough hours that he qualifies for healthcare.

It’s fine. Pete was a Marine, and so it’s no problem to work with a team of half-grown men under the leadership of a barely-competent manager and an underpaid shift lead. That’s pretty much par for the course in Pete’s life.

He likes working with his body in the shipping center. It’s not so satisfying as destroying shit like he did when he was laying low, but it feels good to lift and bend and toss. Sometimes, the shit his coworkers shoot is funny enough to get a smirk from him.

Pete performs for his minders, for the men in suits sitting behind their computers and the guys “reading the newspaper” on the bench across the street. Pete gets a studio apartment, a real one with a real lease. It’s barely better than the basement, but shit. He doesn’t need much. Pete gets a MetroCard, and buys a memory foam mattress online, and buys a crock pot at the thrift store. Pete subscribes to Netflix, and goes for runs, and owns a pair of trousers. The only reason Pete walks around with two black eyes is because Frank got surgery to fix his nose so he can fucking breathe again.

But being Pete isn’t foolproof. Frank’s still there, and Frank wakes up every day missing Maria and remembering the kids are gone. Frank goes for runs at night and has a secret stash of 46 rounds of 7.62 NATO and an M40A5. He’s comfortable switching to .308 Winchesters when he runs through the 7.62s, but for now his supply is holding steady. Frank spends some of Lieberman’s cash getting a new vest because his old one was shot to shit and couldn’t stop a bean bag. Frank still has most of Schoonover’s ordnance squirreled away, and he thinks about upgrading his scope, getting some decent NVGs. But Frank can’t afford for Pete to get in trouble right now, so his nighttime activities are severely curtailed.

Going to group has taught Frank that it’s okay to look around, to explore, to dig deep into yourself and probe the sore spots. He has nothing but respect for the guys (and ladies) in group, and he’s never thought any less of them if they end up crying in front of him. That’s honesty, that’s vulnerability, and it’s strength. It’s the kind of thing that prompts him to poke around inside himself a bit, and start searching for some tools and lessons to help get him through this.

Frank’s never going to be the way he was, but he can put himself back together enough to be the way he is. He is this way now, and since he came back – since he ignored Maria in that basement and came back – he’s here. He ain’t going anywhere.

So it’s time to face the music. Make himself into something he can look at in the mirror and not hate for being alive.

Pete goes to the library a lot. He gets books that Curtis recommends, and books about history, and stupid shit like the latest Lee Child book. He likes the idea of fucking with his minders, reading about the shit that Jack Reacher gets up to.

He goes to the library on Wednesdays, because that’s when story time is. The kids’ section is glassed off in its own little room, painted with that fucking caterpillar that Frank Junior loved and probably just saturated with snot. But if he sits in the armchairs by the window and reads, he can see about half of their little faces fussing and smiling and crying as the volunteer reader reads the story with voices, like it should be done. Some of the moms are into it, some of the moms are not, and some of them take the opportunity to go outside and breathe (or smoke). Frank doesn’t judge – he remembers being in each and every one of those stages, and he was only home a tenth of the time Maria was.

Frank goes to the library to read books he won’t check out, too. Ones he doesn’t want in his history. Which is why he pulls a book that Curt recommended about grief off the shelf and heads for his armchair.

There’s an older man with a high-and-tight in Frank’s usual spot, but the other chair in the arrangement is empty.

“You mind if I sit here, sir?” asks Frank, the the older gentleman looks up from his book about – architecture? History? Something with building blueprints. The man invites him to sit with an open palm after taking Frank’s measure – scruffy beard, long hair, but clean shirt tucked in – and resumes reading.

They read in silence for a bit, Frank taking breaks after phrases like “mourning is different for every person, in every culture” to look up and see the kids making faces at the reader.

An hour later, story time is done and the library gets rowdy for a bit while moms and kids go searching for new books and get in line at the check out counter.

The man sighs, takes off his glasses. Shuts his book, rubs his eyes. He nods to Frank when he gets up and leaves, and Frank nods back.

That’s part of the reason why he’s surprised when he looks up and the man is back, clearing his throat and a different book in hand.

“Excuse me, young man,” he starts and Frank is surprised because he certainly doesn’t look or feel young anymore. He feels ancient. “Am I right in thinking you served?”

Frank nods, and puts on Pete’s face. It’s nicer than Frank’s, a little more friendly. “You are. I just got out – Marines.”

The man nods, “Though I recognized a fellow jarhead. Martin Kadar,” he introduces himself and Pete shakes his hand.

Kadar asks Pete about his MOS – Marksmanship Instructor, which made Frank chuckle when he read it – and he learns that Kadar served through the mid-80s to the first Gulf War. He has a business now, though. Finish carpentry.

“Please forgive me if this is out of line,” Kadar starts and Frank’s interest is piqued. “But I have a need for good workers, men who can show up when they’re expected and won’t waste my time with stupid mistakes. And there’s a lack of that kind of man right now. These kids I’m getting – they’re good for maybe a couple months, if they’re any good to begin with. And I’m thinking, seeing as how you’re here midday, mid-week, that any kind of job you’ve got right now isn’t the kind of thing you want to be doing the rest of your life.”

“No, sir,” says Frank, because Pete’s UPS job is okay but he doesn’t really want to do it forever. And he’d like more regular shifts.

Kadar nods, looks over to the children’s section. “I’m thinking, you’ve got specialized skills that aren’t any use out in the civilian world. And I’m thinking, maybe you want a skill that you can use the rest of your life, support a family with. Feel the satisfaction of a job well done with.”

“Could be,” says Frank. Pete would probably like a job like that.

Kadar nods again, stares him in the eye. “Well, then. Give this a read-through and give me a call if you’re willing to put in the hours. Sound good?” he says, and hands Frank a heavy paperback with a business card tucked in. The front reads Finish Carpenter’s Manual.

Frank looks up, meets Kadar’s outstretched hand with his own, shakes on it. “Sounds good. Thank you for the offer, sir. I will let you know.”

“Okay. You take care, Marine.” Kadar give him a final nod, and heads off to the check out counter.

Frank thumbs the corner of the book, listens to the _thhhhwiiiiip_ of the pages zipping together. Tucks Kadar’s card into his back pocket.

Picks the book on grief back up, begins again where he left off.

 

.:.

 

Three weeks later, and Frank acknowledges that Pete is a hipster.

It starts off small. Frank doesn’t like hipsters. He thinks about the word “hipster,” and he thinks about spoiled-ass middle class kids eating tofu and talking about how the rest of the world are cretins who listen to MP3s instead of vinyl. He thinks they’re snobby and they dress sloppy and they’re just really fucking white.

Turns out, though, that they’re everywhere.

Turns out, every man with a beard in New York City is a fucking hipster.

It goes like this.

Pete shops at thrift stores, because even though Pete has started apprenticing with Martin Kadar four days a week and is working four nights a week at UPS, he’s got about eight grand in dental bills to take care of and he needs a legit paper trail for the CIA.

So he’s in line for coffee, wearing his boots, a pair of Levi’s he found that fit his thighs, a leather belt he found to hold the gapping waist in, a beanie for the cold, and a wool coat. Everything but the boots he picked up at the Housing Works thrift shop. And the kid behind the counter, he says:

“Hey, man. Nice beard. Do you mind if I ask which beard oil you use?”

And Frank is just abso-fucking-lutely speechless. He grunts at the kid, pays for his coffee, hightails it out of there.

But.

He takes a look around as he heads back to the shop. And he sees the guys around him, the ones not wearing suits and half the ones that are – they all have beards. And boots. And heavy-weight denim, and plain beanies, and wool coats. They all have the same haircut. Their beards are better groomed, yeah. And some of them have stupid-looking glasses that make the military BCGs – Birth Control Glasses – look like Gucci. But they all look alike, even the ones that aren’t white.

Frank puts a pin in the thought when he gets back to the shop, because if you zone out with a table saw running you lose fingers. But that night in the warehouse, he gets to thinking. Thinks about all these white guys who look exactly the same. Thinks about blending in, and how much he hates having his hair touch the back of his neck.

Next day, he goes online, reads some reviews, and picks a barber. Makes small talk with the guy, who has a fucking waxed mustache, and listens to him go on and on with recommendations about maintaining the shape of his beard between cuts. There’s trimmers, and beard oil, and combs. He’s never had a beard he wanted to keep – was clean shaven from eighteen to last year, when he grew in his homeless beard. So the information is useful, regardless of how annoying it is to listen to.

But the guy turns Frank around in the chair and he’s looking at the back of his head in the handheld mirror and, shit. He actually looks pretty good. He’s not meeting any uniform standards, for sure, but…It’s clean. Tidy.

Best of all, he blends in.

Martin looks at him the next day, rolls his eyes, and says “Not you, too, Pete.” And Sonny and Nate – Martin’s other guys – they talk big about he’s joined the club and start talking about shaping and trying to make him smell their tins of beard wax.

Frank shows up early to group that day to get it over with and Curtis does a good job keeping a straight face for about thirty seconds. After, at the bar, the waitress tells Frank about the new IPA they have in and Curt loses it again.

Over the next week, he starts getting different kinds of attention. People meet his eyes more, though not all the time because it is, after all, New York. But women, they seem more comfortable. They aren’t threatened by him so much. Men say things like “hey, man,” or nod if he holds the elevator for them. He even gets a slow smile from a girl running past him, like she thinks he’s a stud. Which, she’s a child and he ain’t interested, but. You know. It’s nice.

What’s also weird is that he gets called a fucking hipster. He’s at the thrift store, going through the racks of men’s shirts because he needs another flannel if he’s going to stay warm in the shop and he can’t afford anything new. And this yuppy white guy comes in with his load of donations – which, you know, good for him, supporting local women’s shelters – and takes one look at Frank and rolls his eyes and says “fucking hipsters.”

Frank doesn’t punch him. He wants to, but he doesn’t. Because Pete would probably get arrested.

And that night, he stops in at a bodega to pick up a six pack and some milk and the kid behind the corner jokes with him “What? No PBR?” Because the kid looks at Frank as sees a hipster named Pete who should be buying Pabst Blue Ribbon.

On the other hand, he goes to a coffee shop and holds the door for a kid with a coke-bottle glasses, a mustache, and a fur hat with earflaps. The kid has a baby in a brand-name baby wrap printed with cacti, and Frank realizes that he’s a) really fucking old and b) not even close to this level of hipster. But, and this is the kicker, this kid smiles at him and tells him he likes Frank’s beard. So Frank says “Cute baby.”

The more time that passes, the more these little interactions pile up. The closer Frank gets to embracing his new cover.

He’s been doing some reading – some fluff pieces from the papers, some overwrought Internet forums, even a click-bait “quiz” that identifies him as not being a hipster. He learns he can’t be a hipster because he doesn’t do things ironically, he learns his is a hipster because he does things unironically. He’s a hipster because of his haircut, he isn’t one because he doesn’t have a man bun. He’s a hipster because he reads a print paper and owns tapes from the thrift store, but he’s definitely not because he’s never tried kombucha or drunk out of a mason jar.

Frank decides to stop worrying about it.

 

.:.

 

Beginning of February finds him in this weird liminal space of being Pete while still being Frank. It’s been two months since he dropped Lieberman off for Thanksgiving dinner, a little more than two months since he left Karen in the elevator with bits of hotel kitchen in her hair. Two months since Madani got a hole in her head to match his, since the CIA lady let him know exactly what she thought about him – not much, as it turns out.

And since then Frank’s been good. Real good.

Martin likes him, and Franks learning how to do all sorts of shit with his hands and some expensive machinery. Last week, he and Sonny wrapped up this built-in library set up in the Upper East Side that looked straight out of the movies. He’s going to group, and talking a bit. Mostly about his time overseas, but mentioning his family here and there, too. They’re good, his group. They don’t pry, just listen.

He’s even feeling better, physically. The swelling from the surgeries have all gone down, and he can sleep through the night without waking up with a dry throat from snoring. When he breathes in with his nose, it doesn’t whistle. His body doesn’t scream at him in the mornings, and his hands just barely ache instead of the throbbing he’s used to. He’s even lost a bit of weight, in a good way. That stress pouch around his stomach, the softness of his jaw, it’s gone.

In the Marines, he’d get that stress fat sometimes. You go five, six weeks in training, or deployed, with two or three hours of sleep at night and shitty MREs and live fire every day. Normal guys fall out during training, but even people able to withstand that kind of shit, people like Frank, they don’t come through unscathed. The docs would talk about adrenal fatigue and bodies storing fat because of sustained stress, but the symptoms boiled down to heartburn, shit sleep, dead beds, and dad bods.

Anyway, his sleep is getting better and he doesn’t look like an office worker anymore. And, best of all, he’s having sex dreams again.

It starts off low key. He just wakes up with a boner. Frank doesn’t even think about it until later that week, when he drifts awake slow and easy on his day off to thoughts about Maria. He’s picturing her face, and that cloud of hair, and the way her breasts would bounce as she moved on top of him and she’s smiling and happy. And Frank comes to with his hand wrapped around his dick and he even manages to come before he starts crying.

It’s soft crying though, and he kind of just buries his head in the pillow and allows himself to miss her because he loves her. He’ll always love her.

He’s still angry a lot, and he’d kill Russo if he had the chance to relive the carousel, but the anger is getting detached from his memories.

It’s better this way. His memories are sad and happy now, or regretful. But he’s remembering his wife, remembering his babies, and not feeling that rage he did when he first woke up in that fucking hospital.

So it’s like February rolls around out of fucking nowhere and, while he’s not 100%, he is feeling 100% better.

Except for one thing.

It’s his finger. He tells himself it’s his finger, anyway.

Like, he’ll wrap up a shift at UPS and pick up the paper and get his coffee and he’s Pete. But then he’ll be sitting there, reading Karen’s words about an uptick in gun violence in Hell’s Kitchen, and his finger will start going _tap tap tap_.

It’s itchy. Frank’s itchy, living this Pete life, waiting for his watchdogs to get tired and drift away.

And he thinks about this itchiness, about the information he’s been squirreling away in his brain, about how he only has 46 rounds left for the M40A5 before he has to switch to Winchesters, and he realizes that this is him now.

It wasn’t just about his family.

It wasn’t just about getting his vengeance, about making those fuckers pay.

Frank wants to do something. He sees these stories, sees these people hurt, and he thinks “I could” and “What if” and “If I.”

Pete’s just a veneer, a thin layer of normalcy over Frank. He’s not the Punisher, this mythical boogeyman the newspapers want him to be. Because the man they want the Punisher to be, this impartial dealer of death and vengeance, that’s not Frank. More, it’s not who he wants to be. He wants to kill these shitstains ruining his city, yeah. But it’s not impartial. It’s really fucking partial, is what it is. He sees these guys, and sees what they do, and he _wants_ to hurt them.

Worse, it’s not anger. It’s not like he’s losing his temper, like he’s out of control and committing a crime of passion.

Frank knows perfectly well that this desire, this _addiction_ that’s pulling at his thoughts, is cool and calculated and fed by careful planning. He _wants_ , and he _plans_ , and he makes a little mental black book for himself. But instead of women’s numbers, it’s men’s faces.

Frank’s not sure if that makes his a sociopath, or a serial killer, or what. Because it’s not really the killing he wants, it’s the violence.

He reads a story about police raiding a drug den and recovering a _toddler_ high on _meth_ and Frank just wants to beat that man’s face in and feel his skull crack under his fists.

And that scares the shit out of him.

He’s talked around it at group. About how not having a war to fight scares him. And, shit, they all know he’s Frank Castle even if they say “Hi, Pete,” and “See you next week, Pete.” And not having that purpose, yeah. It’s not great. The apprenticeship helps – he likes the learning and the making and the satisfaction of seeing something he built. But it’s not that goal, that mission, that he’s looking for.

Before, Frank had a mission in the Marines – and he felt good about those missions, before Kandahar – and a mission at home, providing and loving and raising good kids. Now, though, Pete has no one, and Frank only has Curt.

So he understands this about himself, that he’s looking for a purpose and that his fucked up, hole-in-his-head brain has settled on killing bad guys as that mission. And he knows that it’s fucked up, but he also doesn’t give a shit that it’s fucked up. These guys he’s going after, none of them are turning corners, turning over new leaves. They’re scum.

So, killing them is okay.

What Frank can’t reconcile is this thirst for pain, for violence. It doesn’t feel like him, and it makes him wonder if Maria would still love him if she knew. Curt says she would, that she would always love him, but Curt doesn’t know what it was like, that last eighteen months. When he wasn’t sure if Maria would stay in it with him, or if she was going to drop him. Getting out was the only reason she stayed, he can admit that now. But whether they would have made it with him back home…

Well, he’ll never know.

He doesn’t know if it’s emotional scarring, psychic trauma that’s made him crave it. Or if it’s actual neurological fuckery, the result of a bullet in his brain and too many hits to his head. He’s a smart guy, he’s read about TBI and reduced mental function and increased violence. So it could be that.

Or it could just be that Frank isn’t a good guy.

Regardless, the outcome is the same.

Frank keeps Curt, because he’s the only one who knows everything anymore. Who knows before-Frank and after-Frank. But he cuts Lieberman loose, because nothing good can come from him being in his life, in the lives of his family. And he doesn’t reach out to Karen, even when he passes by her apartment and sees the roses or reads between the lines of her latest article, _Where are you, Frank?_

Because as long as his finger keeps _tap tap tap_ -ing to the thrum of the violence singing in his blood, he’s not safe for them to be around.

 

.:.

 

One day, he’s walking by a park when he’s startled out of his thoughts by the happy shriek of a kid. And Frank’s real proud of himself because he didn’t flash to that place, that headspace, where he drops into action. Instead, his mind heard that shrill sound and immediately categorized it as “happy” not “scared.”

Frank feels like that’s maybe a sign, so he meanders over to one of the park benches and plants his ass. He’s got a paperback of _Ender’s Game_ in his back pocket, which he pulls out and starts to read. But ten minutes go by and he realizes he hasn’t absorbed one bit of the story, so he puts the book down and instead just watches the kids.

There’s about eight of them, swinging and running and yelling watched over by five different women staged around the playground. Two of the women are right there, under the slides and by the swings, hovering. Two more are on other benches, tending to little babies still in strollers. And the fifth is staring daggers at him.

Frank ignores her.

Five of the kids – the ones without the hover moms, no surprise there – are involved in some sort of convoluted game that involves a shit ton of screeching and a moderate amount of jostling. They’re having a ball, and Frank can’t help but remember his kids doing pretty much this same exact thing about three years ago. He also remembers how much shit he caught from Maria, because the game Lisa invented involved jumping off the play tower and, well. Frankie was fine. Didn’t even need stitches.

So he’s pretty much zoned out, in this half-memory half-flashback and totally unaware of his surroundings for the first time in probably years. And he’s pretty happy, because this memory has sharp edges and only a little bit of melancholy and he’s really enjoying being able to remember his kids like this.

And then that woman with the death glare fucks it all up.

“Excuse me,” she says but it’s a weaponized courtesy, not a polite interruption. “I think you need to leave.”

She’s youngish – Karen’s age, maybe – with pretty blonde hair curled into ringlets. She has one of those generically pretty faces, with the skinny yoga mom outfit and the sheepskin boots that Frank is familiar with from every officer’s wife ever (Maria included). She has a really shitty expression on her face, though, and it ruins whatever she was going for.

Frank sort of stares at her blankly, because he can’t for the life of him figure out what the hell this lady’s deal is. “Ma’am,” he settles on, finally.

“Yeah, you need to leave. You don’t belong here,” she says to that.

“Ma’am?” he replies, because what the fuck?

“I saw you walk up. You don’t have any kids here. So you need to leave.”

“Jesus, lady. Leave him alone.”

It’s pretty much exactly what was running through Frank’s mind, but the words come out of another one of the mom’s mouths. This one’s older, maybe Frank’s age, small and golden with black hair in tight ringlets. She’s cradling a baby to her chest and has one of those nursing blankets thrown over its head, so Frank quickly averts his gaze. Maria hated it when people would stare at her breastfeeding.

Though she was okay with Frank doing it.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” says yoga mom, like she’s been personally attacked.

“No, I don’t think I will. This man is just sitting here, bothering no one and you feel like you need to chase him off? Screw you, lady. You need to mind your own business.”

“Um, I think I am. I don’t know what kind of mom you are, but I sure as heck don’t let strange men stare at _my_ kids.”

“Cool your tits. Just because a man likes kids doesn’t make him a pedophile. It makes him goddamn human. Humans like kids, lady. It’s a thing. Look it up.”

“I—“ says yoga mom, and Frank watches her mouth move as she struggles for words. “I don’t have to listen to this!”

“No,” rejoins nursing mom. “But maybe you should. You don’t know anything about this man – maybe it isn’t his week and he’s missing his kids, or maybe he’s trying to figure out if he can be a dad. You don’t know. But you should _definitely_ leave this man alone and go mind you business.”

Yoga mom shoots her a venomous glare, turns it on Frank, and then spins around and marches over to the playing kids. Together, Frank and the nursing mom watch as she wrangles two boys involved in the game and drags them off, much to their loud disappointment.

“Look at that,” says nursing mom. Yoga mom has stopped by the hover moms, clearly relating her version of events to them. “Just can’t be graceful in defeat.”

Frank clears his throat, fixes his gaze on her face. “Thank you, ma’am, for what you did. But if I—“

“You didn’t do squat, buddy. People like that piss me off, though. You know my husband has been chased out of this park _three times_ by women like that? When he was here with our kids! Unbelievable!”

She’s bouncing up a down a little, peeking under the nursing blanket down at the baby. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Uh, Pete. My name is Pete, ma’am.”

“Hi Pete, I’m Marina.” Except Frank hears _Maria_ and his head is full of the sound of the blood rushing around his brain. But he keeps listening, because eventually he processes her saying, “…you know how to burp a baby? Here.” And Marina is handing him her infant and the nursing blanket and fiddling with her shirt.

Frank does know how to burp a baby, and he puts the little body over he shoulder and starts jiggling its squishy butt and tapping its tiny back.

“I’ll be right back. I’m fucking leaking again. _Unbelievable_.”

Marina _is_ right back, just beelining straight for her stroller and is setting up her battle station on the bench next to him in a matter of moments. She’s got a jacket on over her shirt now and she’s swapping out the nursing blanket for a spit rag and fiddling with the gusset of the baby’s leggings, checking the diaper.

“You okay,” she says, but not like she’s actually checking.

Frank is really okay, and he’s also a wreck. Marina’s baby is making soft little sucking, snorting sounds into his neck and he can feel the tiny heartbeat through the quilted fabric of its jacket. And it is simultaneously the most peaceful he’s felt since the carousel, and also the worst. Because this isn’t just a baby, it’s an _infant_. Just so _small_ , and Frank never actually got to hold Lisa or Frank Junior when they were this little. Both times, he was deployed.

“I, uh—“ Frank clears his throat, rubs the baby’s back, clears his throat again. “Yeah. No, I’m good.”

“Uh-huh,” says Marina, and she’s meeting his eyes and apparently finding something that she’s okay with because she settles back into the bench. “You can hand her back any time you get tired of it. Didn’t mean to co-opt you – I pretty much just treated you like you were Luis just now!” she laughs a little to herself. “You get a lot more loosey-goosey after number four.

“But mommy still loves you,” she continues, reaching over and playing with the baby’s foot. “Just as much as everyone else, hey?”

The baby gurgles into Frank’s neck, and he recognizes that sound quick enough to move the blanket over and catch the wash of spit up.

“Hey,” he says as he pulls the baby away to dab at her face. She’s got a gray beanie on and huge brown eyes and she looks basically like a really cute baby. With spit up on her face. “Nice one,” he says after she’s clean, and puts her back on his shoulder with the nasty part of the towel folded over.

“You’ve got Lourdes, by the way. And that’s Roberto – Robbie –, Pilar, and Benny over there raising hell.” Marina nods at her kids, and Frank can make out that three of them look like they’re related. The fourth probably belongs to the other bench mom, who he sees is reading a book.

“Nice to meet you, Lourdes,” he whispers to the baby. “You have a beautiful family, ma’am.”

“Yes, I do,” she laughs. “Thank you very much.”

The baby gets a bit restless after a while, so Frank flips her so she’s curled up tight into his arm and checks her diaper. Still dry. But there’s something about holding the baby, something about sitting here next to a woman almost named Maria. It’s hell.

It’s heaven.

“Shit,” says Frank, wiping at his face. “Sorry, ma’am,” he adds.

“Hey,” she says softly with soft eyes. “You just take your time, okay, honey? You just let it out. Ain’t nothing like a baby to make you weepy, even if you’re the happiest person in the room.”

“I think it’s the smell,” he says eventually, once his tight throat has loosened a bit.

“Best goddamn smell in the world, right?” she laughs.

“Hoo-ah,” replies Frank, and takes a whiff.

“It ain’t none of my business, Pete,” says Marina eventually, sort of drowsy, maybe from the breastfeeding, maybe just because she’s got four kids she doesn’t have to take care of _right this minute_. “But if you’re wondering if you’d be a good dad, or if you are a good dad, or if you were…well, I can tell. Whoever gets to have you as a father, or as a partner? That’s a blessed person.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he replies, and sits there holding the sleeping baby while her mother and he watch her siblings raise hell.

 

.:.

 

It’s March and he’s reading _Julius Caesar_. It’s an annotated version because he’s smart but he’s never been a nerd and all these references are fucking dense.

It’s on Curt’s reading list, because it has to do with friendship, and loyalty, and patriotism, and struggling to decide what’s right even if it entails evil actions.

The ending isn’t surprise, of course. But he’s on a second read-through anyway, because he hadn’t come to any conclusions one way or the other about Brutus or Caesar. Good news is, the event is nearly two thousand years old and historians are still mulling over the same questions.

Anyway, it’s a cute little joke he’s playing with himself and he thinks he’s really fucking clever, reading Shakespeare in March.

He feels really normal, just Joe Schmoe for about the first two weeks of the month. Then the fifteenth comes around, and Frank picks up the _Bulletin_ and his world abruptly realigns so that he is firmly, undeniably Frank Castle.

_Twelve Trafficked Teens Found_

_Suspected Sex Ring Rocks Hell’s Kitchen_

That’s Karen’s headline, but it might as well read _Where Are You, Frank Castle? I Found You Someone to Punish_.

He’s _furious_. Mad at himself for letting him slip into this bullshit identity, angry that the wounds that have just started to scar over are abruptly torn open again. Pissed as hell at Karen, for putting herself in danger. For digging into shit that could get her killed, and not even letting him know about it so he could keep an eye on her.

For putting this out there for him to see, so he can track it down and destroy it.

Like she’s a handler, and he’s an attack dog. _Sic ‘em_ , _Frank._

Like the things he does, the people he kills, like it’s a zero-sum game where one dead bad guy means one less bad guy.

It’s not that way, he knows that. She knows that.

Because the truth is, one dead bad guy means one bad guy job vacancy. It’s just a temporary vacuum, soon filled by the next opportunistic asshole.

And Karen, that _moron_ , that tough-as-nails, .380 toting, smart-as-hell _idiot_ leaves the _Bulletin_ office that night well past ten, when the streets are half empty and the crazies come out.

She doesn’t even call a cab – just hoofs it down the sidewalk with that gray coat pulled tight and two bags slung over her shoulder, weighing her down. Didn’t even change out of her pumps.

“Goddamnit, Karen,” he says when the guy is finally out cold and they’ve ducked behind a dark storefront. He wipes his hands on the asshole’s shirt, wiping off the blood.

His hands hurt like hell. Like they forgot what it is to punch someone.

“You do this for fun, huh?” he spits, figuratively and metaphorically. There’s blood in his mouth from his cut cheek, but at least his remaining teeth are all there.

“No,” she spits back, venomous and riled up. “I do this because it’s right. And if you’d give me a single damn way to get in contact with you, I wouldn’t have to take such stupid risks just to lay eyes on you.” She’s panting from the adrenaline and cortisol, little .380 steady and sure in her hands.

“That how it is?” he asks, just as brutal. “Fine. Then come see what you’ve wrought, Karen Page.”

He has to give it to her. She doesn’t once protest as he leads the stunned man back down the street, doesn’t kick up a fuss when Frank zips his wrists and legs together, or shoves a rag in his mouth. Just climbs into the minivan with him, along for the ride to his little psychopathic mancave.

She’s cold as ice as Frank talks to the man, stays in the room even when the bones start breaking and the man starts sobbing. She’s covering her mouth, sure, but she’s holding her ground right there in the corner.

The guy’s not dumb. He knows who Frank is, knows how this is going to end.

Frank’s not dumb either. He knows ways to get better information, knows that this grunt isn’t a key player or a linchpin. But he doesn’t have the patience, or the resources, or the desire to keep this guy isolated, or uncomfortable, or play with him or become his friend.

And in the end, it’s not about the killing.

It’s about the violence.

Frank puts him down with a single shot when they’re both done.

It’s the first violence he’s wrought in months, and Pete feels just as dead as the asshole tapes to the chair. He feels dirty, like he’s betraying Pete, and Kadar, and Curt, and Lourdes and Marina, and that stupid fucking hipster with the baby.

Because, right now? Frank feels _alive._

 _“Woof_ ,” says Frank, right in Karen’s face. “Your dog’s got the scent now, Karen. You can relax.”

“Fuck you.” Her voice is low and hoarse. “Your not my dog, Frank. I’m yours.” She raises her head, pinning him with those fucking eyes. “Isn’t that right, soldier? You’ve got the guns, I’ve got the nose. I sniff them out and you take them down.”

“That right?” Frank asks, furious with her. Furious she could think something like that, like he’s using her to satisfy this urge for violence. He’d _never_ do something like that.

 _But_ , says a voice in the back of his mind.

And then Frank stops.

Because she’s not wrong. But he isn’t wrong either.

“Frank,” she says after a while. “Frank, what’s wrong with us?”

“Shit, ma’am,” he says finally. “What isn’t?”

 

.:.

 

It’s dicey for a while after he finishes.

There’s no way DHS or the CIA missed his little excursion. His vest was plain, sure, but the signs were all there.

Kadar sure didn’t miss them. He looks worried when Pete reappears after a week of calling out with the flu, doesn’t miss the busted cheek or his sore ribs. Frank even catches him doing some sleuthing on his office computer, trying to be sneaky.

But he never comes out and says anything. That has to be good enough, he supposes.

He tries to lay low, go to group, go to the library. Pete’s in hot water with UPS, but that cools off after he resumes his normal solid work. And if the guys (and ladies) in group bring him over a cup of coffee from the snack table, well.

He’s always been shit at pretending.

“God, you’re good at this,” says Karen in April.

They’re in her apartment, in Hell’s Kitchen, eating dinner. Frank cooked, because he’s good at it. He misses his kitchen, though, the one Maria was always talking about re-doing.

Misses sharp knives, too. Karen’s are blunt and hell to work with.

“I have hidden depths,” he jokes, a little too close to home. He jiggles his knee under the table, edgy.

“Who doesn’t,” she replies, grim.

“I, for example, am excellent at dishes,” she continues, picking the conversation up and moving it along like he isn’t a massive fuckup with a hole in his head.

“Would you imagine that,” he drawls, and shoots her a little grin.

Micro is still snippy, sending him little digital snark-filled messages about his inability to cover his tracks, and critiquing his takedown of the sex ring shitstains. There are diagrams, even.

He’s been dropping by Karen’s place, too, to check in. It’s a little ritual they’re making for themselves.

It’s almost like group.

It starts off the same way, every time. A quick verbal and visual check-in, poking one another to check for wounds physical and mental.

Then, comes sharing time. Karen tells him about her stories, about her research. Most of the time, it’s pretty innocuous stuff. Reporters don’t specialize in busting huge stories, at least not to the exclusion of their bread-and-butter smaller pieces. But when she finds threads to pull at, stories that don’t add up, she shares with him.

And Frank shares with her. She knows about the need for violence he has, because he’s told her about it. And telling her about it makes it something that they can control, almost. Something they can direct, together, to take out the worst of the worst.

“It’s never going to end,” she whispered when he came back last month, all over bruises and reeking of gunpowder. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

“I know, ma’am,” he’d said. “Me, too.”

After sharing, comes open discussion. That’s when they eat, most of the time Frank’s cooking. They try to stay away from the normal topics, like work or acquaintances. But Frank’s started to let her know what he’s reading, so they sometimes talk about his books. A lot of the time, they share memories.

He talks about Maria, and Lisa, and Frank Junior. About his mom, sometimes, or the guys in his unit.

She tells him about Kevin, and her dad.

It’s hard, but it’s good, too.

“Hey,” she teases as he puts the leftovers away in her fancy glass Tupperware. “I thought dishes was my thing.”

“You should learn to share,” he jokes right back, and starts the coffeemaker.

He hangs out in her tiny galley kitchen while she finishes up, toweling the bigger pieces to free up room in the drying rack. He’s a tidy cook – cleans as he goes – but there’s still enough to do that the coffeemaker is spluttering and spitting by the time they’re done.

“Thanks,” he says when she hands him a cup.

“You’re welcome,” she smiles back at him.

Being Pete is easy. Being Before-Frank was hard work, and the payoff was worth every drop of sweat.

Being this new guy, After-Frank.

It’s almost impossible.

Because he’s still Before-Frank, who sang lullabies to his kids, and he’s also still that raw pit of vengeance who woke up in the hospital bed. The one the newspapers called The Punisher.

But he’s also the guy standing in Karen Page’s kitchen, who has half-healed scars on his face and his brain, and a thirst to hurt. And After-Frank wants things that his past selves couldn’t imagine ever wanting, ever thinking about wanting. This guy wants things he knows are _wrong_.

But it’s easy, too. So easy, sometimes, especially with Karen. Because she wants the same kind of wrong things, too. She wants them to pay, and she wants them to stop.

“Hey,” he says as she moves to slip by him.

“Yeah?” she says, confused when he takes the cup out of her unresisting hand.

Her lips under his, it’s wrong. The height is wrong, she’s too tall. And her bottom lip’s too plump. Her hair is the wrong color, wrong texture, wrong length.

It’s also very right, and very easy.

“Yes?” he asks a moment later, asking her for permission and asking himself, too.

She stares back at him with those blue, blue eyes. They look nothing like his, but they’re just like his. They’ve got the same kind of hunger that his do, whenever they find a new thing to stop.

Turns out, they’ve got the same kind of hunger now, when they’re finding a new thing to start.

“Yes,” she finally says, and leans in.


End file.
